


Clues for CJ

by westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-23
Updated: 2003-09-23
Packaged: 2019-05-15 19:11:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14796314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist/pseuds/westwingfanfictioncentral_archivist
Summary: A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of theWest Wing Fanfiction Central, a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in theannouncement post.





	Clues for CJ

**Author's Note:**

> A copy of this work was once archived at National Library, a part of the [ West Wing Fanfiction Central](https://fanlore.org/wiki/West_Wing_Fanfiction_Central), a West Wing fanfiction archive. More information about the Open Doors approved archive move can be found in the [announcement post](http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/8325).

**Clues for CJ**

**by:** Dee 

**Category/Pairing:** Josh/Donna  
**Rating: MATURE**  
 **Disclaimer(s):** Not mine. Not really his anymore either.  
**Spoiler:** Spoilers all the way through current.  


**Notes:** Follows: "Introducing the Intern"

"I'm going to lunch now," I said and heard the suspicion in my voice. 

I couldn't help it. I didn't like this new kid and I didn't trust him. First strike was the fact that he'd disobeyed me regarding the couch. He had actually found one that could fit in Josh's office with the door closed. Josh, naturally loved it. I didn't have the heart to take it away from him. 

Second strike was his very existence. What did Josh and I need with an intern? We'd been doing fine on our own for years. But Leo said this kid was specifically assigned to help us. Just us. In the past few days it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to come up with things for him to do. 

Mostly because I wouldn't let him do anything. 

As a result he hadn't earned a third strike, but as soon as he did he was out of here. 

"Okay." 

"I'll be back in an hour." 

"Okay." 

"I'll just be downstairs in the mess or in C.J.'s office if you need me." 

He sighed. "Okay." 

I guess he was getting pretty bored just sitting around doing nothing. I should give him some responsibility. "If Josh gets back before I do he has a meeting with Leo. He'll need his folder of notes. I've left it in the top right hand bin on his desk." I walked over and pointed inside the office just so he could see what I was talking about, but he didn't even bother to get up from his chair in my cube and look at where I was pointing. 

Clearly this kid had an attitude problem. 

"Did you get that? The top right hand bin." 

"Got it." 

"It has a sticky on it. It says Notes for Meeting with Leo." 

I thought I caught him rolling his eyes, but I chose to overlook it. "Josh might think it says something like Nachos Needing Tea - but it says." 

"Miss Moss," he said. I winced a little at that title. It sounded so strange, but I hadn't yet given him permission to refer to me by my first name. I thought it was important to establish my authority with him right from the start. 

"I got it," he enunciated very clearly. 

I wanted to smack him. 

** 

I sat across from C.J. picking at my salad thinking, actually obsessing, about this new intern, Senator Bennett's son, and why Leo might have chosen this moment to stick us with a Republican intern. 

"What's that face for?" 

I guess my concern showed through. Which was odd because normally I had a poker face whenever I was under any kind of emotional stress. 

"Nothing. It's the new intern. Did you hear about the smaller couch?" 

"Are you kidding? Josh won't stop talking about it. You would have thought the kid found him a chest of gold." 

Josh wouldn't have liked that half so much as the couch that actually fit in his office. "He makes me nervous." 

"I know. Talk about having an enemy among us. This kid is playing right in our backyard. I don't know what Leo was thinking." 

Unfortunately, I had a pretty good idea as to what he was thinking. And it occurred to me that C.J. might understand a little about what I was going through. "C.J. when you were dating Danny did you get a lot of flack from everyone?" 

"Technically, we were never dating. We were kissing for a brief time." She frowned then. "We're not kissing anymore. He kissed me that one time. you know as Santa.. but now he's dating someone else. You want to know what her name is? Rebecca." 

Uh oh, I thought. Sore point. 

"She's a doctor. Dr. Re-becc-a. You know what he calls her?" 

"Rebecca?" 

"Becky. I mean come on, Becky? What kind of name is that for a doctor?" 

"It's not a good one," I replied trying to be serious. "But here's the thing I sort of wanted to talk about me." 

She stared at me hard and I winced a bit under the probing eye of a press secretary who could read people better than anyone I ever knew. 

"Oh no," she exclaimed. 

"Oh no, what?" 

"Please don't tell me. you didn't." 

Did she know? Was that possible? "I didn't do anything." Almost anything. Participation in one surprise attack kiss surely couldn't be counted against me. 

"You know we all thought this was eventually going to happen. We saw it coming a mile away." 

"You did?" Evidently I didn't posses quite the poker face I needed to have when it came to my feelings for Josh. "For how long?" I wondered. 

"Since the beginning. I mean what is it with you and controversial relationships? First there's the guy we're not supposed to talk about, then Jack." 

"Hey," I stopped her. "No fair bringing up the guy we're not supposed to talk about and there wasn't anything wrong with Jack. You said you liked him." 

"And I did right up until the moment he made an inflammatory remark against his Commander-in-Chief and left you holding the bag for it." 

Yeah, that really didn't speak very highly of him. But I had reasons for those relationships. Good ones. None of which I could explain to C.J., but I wasn't a total ninny when it came to problematic relationships. Hadn't I avoided this one for years? 

"Yes, Joe Quincy is a good looking man," she continued. "But his politics." 

Wait. Joe? "I don't have a thing for Joe Quincy." 

"You don't?" 

"No," I said honestly. 

For the record though I don't necessarily have the automatic prejudice against all republicans that my co-workers have. My mother was a democrat, but my father was a republican. In the end I politically sided with my mother, but a girl could never truly hate the party her daddy belonged to. 

It would be too much like hating her daddy. 

"So this isn't another republican thing?" 

"No." I shouldn't have said anything. It wasn't really a thing at all. For the most part we'd almost put it, the kiss, completely behind us. I guess the problem was deep down I knew that wasn't where I wanted it. 

"This is another controversy then." 

"No, it was just a question." 

"A leading one." 

Fair enough. "Are you going to answer it?" 

C.J. sighed and thought back in time. "No one was pleased about it. Toby especially made some veiled comments that didn't thrill me. But in the end they trusted my judgment." 

"But it didn't work out." 

"That wasn't because of the guys. That was because of . me and Danny." 

I nodded my head as I considered that. I wondered after my track record of dating men that resulted in midnight diary trades and flubbed press quotes if anyone would trust my judgment. In all honesty, I suppose they had a reason to doubt it. 

"What is this about, Donna?" 

I shook my head. "It's nothing really. Just stuff I was thinking about. I need to get back. I don't like to leave the child for too long." 

"He's twenty-three." 

"Your point?" 

"That's not even ten years younger than you are. That's only a few years younger than you were when you started working for Josh." 

Eeww. Was that right? I did the math in my head. Damn. The comparison didn't thrill me. 

"I was `way' more mature." C.J. laughed and I smiled, but on the inside I was still thinking eeww. Was I ever really that young? 

I got back to my cube and found him, Ryan, sitting there with his feet up on my desk. "Ryan?" 

Instantly, he dropped his feet to the floor. Yeah, like I wasn't going to notice that. 

He stood up and offered a small wave. "Miss Moss." 

I saw behind him a stack of pink messages. I picked them up and looked at them and realized there was writing on them. "What are these?" 

"Messages. See that's who called," he said pointed to a line on the page. "And this box here is for the time." 

"Do you need to be smacked again?" 

"No ma'am." 

"I see that they are messages. How did you get them?" 

"I answered the phone." 

"What are you doing answering the phone when I'm not here?" 

He squinted at me. "My job?" 

Huh. That's right. He was an intern. Technically there was no reason why he shouldn't be answering the phones. I looked at the messages again. The writing was neat. The message was clear. 

Huh. 

At that moment Josh breezed by on his way to his office. "Donna! I'm hungry. Get me lunch will ya?" 

He closed the door behind him now that he could and still have his couch. 

"Ryan, I think I found something for you to do. You need to get Josh's lunch." 

"Okay." 

Okay. This was amazing. No more fetching. No more phones. A whole new world was opening up to me. "He'll want a burger." 

"You don't want to ask him what he wants?" 

I smiled at his pathetic attempt to be eager. "It's Thursday. He'll want a burger. Are you writing this down?" 

He wasn't, which was of course why I asked the question. 

"I think I can remember." 

"Trust me." 

He reached for a pad on my desk and a pen. "A burger," he said aloud as he wrote it down. "How does he like it done?" 

"This is where it gets tricky." 

After five minutes he was on page three of the pad and still writing. 

"Are you kidding me with this?" he asked as he shook the cramp out of his hand. 

"Look at my face," I said. "Does it look like I'm kidding?" 

He saw right away that I was serious. "Okay." 

"Oh and I would like a Diet Coke with a straw." 

At this point I thought he would balk, but instead he added it to the list and then went on his way. 

I walked in to Josh's office and he glanced up looking confused. "I thought you were going to get me lunch." 

"Ryan's going to get it," I said carefully. 

Fear leaped into his eyes. "But he won't know." 

"I explained everything." 

"Even about the ketchup and." 

"The mustard being mixed together. Yes. We need to do this Josh. We need to see exactly what our intern is capable of. Here, he took these." 

Josh took the pink slips from my hand. "I can read these," he said clearly awestruck. 

"I know." 

"Wow. So maybe Leo was really doing us a favor by sending this kid to us." 

"Or he knows that we kissed and is using this intern as a deterrent against any kind aberrant activities we might be considering engaging in." 

I folded my arms over my chest and leaned against the desk as Josh and I communicated silently for a moment. 

Finally, he said, "Did you say consider?" 

I gulped first and then nodded. 

Suddenly, the door popped open and Ryan was panting a little as if he'd been running, his pad still clutched tightly in his hand. "Okay, tell me again about this ketchup and mustard thing. It has to be mixed in a what ." 

"Clockwise circular motion," we finished together. 

He looked at us like we were crazy. Maybe we were. 

That and a little paranoid. 

The End.

See the Sequel: "A Lesson From Leo" 


End file.
